I have to say, I'm not sure I agree with this statement:

"Qrack's automatically identifying sky points method is vastly superior and easier on someone wanting to use it."


Unless there was some other way to limit which sky sections snow/rain could fall from, it would be a rather unfriendly situation to work with. Obviously the majority of cases it would be perfectly fine to have the particles fall from any sky surface, and it would certainly save on a few brushes, I can't think of a situation where it was better not to have as much fine-grained control as possible in content creation.

Just my 2 cents, of course. 

We'd still want the option of just spawning from all sky though - to suit the 90% of users who'd want to do it like that.

We'd certainly also want the ability to trigger sky rain on/off and change the density of it etc. midgame (like we do with fog triggers in AD and whatnot). 

That is some awesome info collation / analysis.

Best option (IMO) would be to use a particle based system from a func_weather/rain/snow brush. This way it could be triggered on or off, disabled in multiplayer, chosen where to implement and could allow flexibility in properties.

Style: snow, rain, acid-rain, etc
Density: distance apart.
Speed: speed.
Angle: straight down or xy

Am I going to implement this myself? Fuck no, I have enough shit on my plate already =P 

It could be blocked with skip brushes or skip the engine supported it which it should since particles should be blocked by geometry. 

 

baker, if you're using points rather than triangles/polys, you're doing it the lame way.
you can find the correct(afaict) maths for an even distribution in eg fte's R_Clutter_Insert function. no need to subdivide that way, and you don't get particles spawning within walls either (excluding fpu precision, anyway).

the idea of quakespasm with effects like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-rO8haGoh4 (please excuse the bugged gloss, that's an ooold video) and yet no texture replacements kinda makes me laugh.
at the same time, the idea of a load of cubes or quads or circles or whatever doesn't fill me with confidence either.

regarding csqc, the idea of that without any other qc extensions nor replacement textures is also a bit of a joke, at least for everyone but the guy trying to use it, who would get too frustrated to produce anything worthwhile.

really though, if you want an engine with a decent particle system and decent csqc etc, then just use an engine that already has that stuff.
in all seriousness, a low-res weather system is imho just going to look as goofy as eg the gloss in that youtube clip. sure, its interesting to do for the sake of doing, but I'm skeptical about the results and repercussions. 

in all seriousness, a low-res weather system is imho just going to look as goofy as eg the gloss in that youtube clip

What I had in mind visually, was something that follows the same kind of aesthetic as sock's particle stuff. It's totes quakey. Just simple pixelley spritey things. 

@Spike -- interesting points ... of course my attempt to was to chart out existing bodies of work --- I was curious as to R00k's method of picking rain origin points.

Snow? I was thinking a bit subtle along the lines of Nehahra snow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6141F64dB0k

... but adapted to look a little more like Seven's DarkPlaces snow.

I'm in the school of thought that map effects in this game should add very gently to the content they appear in. Versus the idea of the effects being the center of the attention.

/Which may be largely academic, lack of time and all that ... 

Baker, that video almost perfectly describes what I was thinking in terms of weather effect quality. 

"I'm in the school of thought that map effects in this game should add very gently to the content they appear in. Versus the idea of the effects being the center of the attention. "

Wins the thread.

Also that video is nice and subtle, yeah. Works well. 

Nice and inoffensively quakesque. 

is perfectly fine for those engines aiming for a "classic" feel. Anything else would be jarring. 

Looking at the neh snow video, it's striking how something so simple adds so much life to an otherwise static scene. A Good Addition To Quake. 

The same way as Sock and other top modern mappers use fog and coloured lighting. 

So, is it possible to use a custom screen resolution in full screen mode? Setting vid_height, vid_width in the config appears to do nothing unless it fits one of the standard resolutions available in the in-game menu. 

The menu should list all the video modes that your driver says it can support, so probably not, unless the list is incomplete. 

Well, I'm trying to set it to 960x540 on my 1920x1080 laptop lcd (so, exactly half-resolution).

960x540 doesn't appear in the menu :{

Reason I'm trying this is because I think quake looks best at around 480 vertical resolution. I figured if I could set it to exactly half-resolution of my LCD it might minimise the shitty blurring that happens when LCDs try to display lower than native res. 

that is 2x scaling

nice and simple. 

Well, I'm trying to set it to 960x540 on my 1920x1080 laptop lcd (so, exactly half-resolution).

I tried exactly that a few days ago with no luck :( I thought I was just doing something wrong, guess not... 

I'm trying to get a low-resolution display of the game blown up on the screen so I can see da pixels nice and chunky.

Anything in windowed mode isn't going to be blown up - unless I'm missing a trick here?

Also, I still kinda want it fullscreen and using the same aspect ratio as my monitor.... 

I always felt you had impeccable taste. 

 

might have more luck


-width 960 -height 540 -fullscreen quakespasm in linux just defaults to 720p with a black border 

also, i assume you've run vid_describemodes in the console? 

Uh, Run In Dosbox With Dosquake?

Nah, that sounds like a rubbish way to play QuakeSpasm.